🧿

[casey]

The thicker logo gave me idea that our logo could be a nazar. A nazar is an eye-shaped amulet and decorative motif that is believed to ward against the evil eye.

I did a simple version of it in SVG, with the existing border, and used what seem to be common proportions and coloring.

Pros:

• It's very recognizable
• It's blue
• It has its own emoji
• It's very simple
• The connotation of protecting against the evil eye is nice, especially in the metaphorical sense of guarding against bad luck and surveillance, and protecting the marketplace
• It's not only Greek, but definitely still a popular symbol there. I've seen it most myself in Turkey.
• It can still stand in for an O in "Agora", like so: A G 🧿 R A
• Solid color border makes it easy to adapt to different shapes. For android we can use circle as-is, for iOS we can just use a blue squircle in place of the outermost blue circle.

Cons:

• It's an existing symbol. I'm not sure what this means in terms of trademark. We might not be able to trademark it, but on the other hand, that might be a benefit, since if so then nobody can trademark it. We could certainly trademark "A G 🧿 R A" though.
• It might look "generic" to people who are already familiar with the symbol
• It might have some cultural connotation I'm not aware of (I think not though, trinkets with these things are sold by the armful, and it's shared by a whole bunch of cultures, so it's not at all thought of as a holy or culturally important symbol)

What do you think?

[casey]

Pretty sweet SVG diff viewer on GitHub, btw:

[casey]

In situ: